Half a year after emerging from a widely-reported crisis between the Israeli investors and managers of Jerusalem Global Ventures (JGV), founding partner Shlomo Kalish and his team are gearing up for another financing round, this time for $150 million. Other funds that have already entered the fundraising fray include Pitango Venture Capital (which is set to close its funding round), Genesis Partners, Carmel Ventures, Giza Venture Capital, Concord Ventures, Challenge Fund - Etgar, and Gemini Israel Funds.
Kalish said, "We are ready to begin raising a new $150 million fund later this year, or in early 2005. Many funds are in the process of financing rounds, so we may wait a bit".
This fundraising round is not a trivial matter, and the importance of this display of self-confidence by a fund that suffered from such bitter divisiveness cannot be discounted. Due to a confidentiality agreement, Kalish cannot comment about the conflict or its ramifications, but in the past, even before the crisis was resolved, he told ''Globes'' clearly, "Of course it will have an effect on our next fund. There won't be Israeli investors, only foreign ones". Kalish appears confident in himself, so perhaps he knows more than he will reveal about his foreign investors' position in the fund.
Raising a new fund before making any significant exits, and only a few months after resolving the dispute, proves that Kalish is no coward. When it erupted in June 2003, the JGV rift caused an upheaval in the local venture capital industry. This was only four months after JGV reduced the volume of two funds, NetLaunch and CommLaunch, from $150 million to $120 million.
Shlomo Kalish is one of Israel's leading technology investors. In 1994, he founded The Jerusalem Global Group and in 1999 he founded Jerusalem Global Ventures. From 1997 to 1999, he served as a general partner of Concord (K.T.) Ventures I, LP, where he was responsible for the investments in Saifun Semiconductors, Exent, Oridion Medical, Oren Semiconductors, and Optical Solutions. Kalish is currently chairman of the board of Chiasma, and serves on the boards of directors of LocatioNet Systems, Nano-Or Technologies, Saifun Semiconductors, and Valor and is an observer on the boards of Mellanox Technologies and Notal Vision.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on Monday, July 05, 2004